Marama Davidson's full Green Party AGM speech

  • 07/08/2021
Read it here.
Read it here. Photo credit: Getty Images.

Greens co-leader Marama Davidson has delivered a speech at her party's annual general meeting on Saturday.

Read the full speech:

Karanga te rā, karanga te rā!

Karangahia ngā ihi o te rā, kia hui te ora, kia hui te mārama

Wetekina te pō, kia pūrangiaho te kōrero

Tākiri te haeata, ka ao, ka awatea, horahia mai ko te ao mārama

Tīhei mauri ora

Kei aku iti, kei aku rahi, kei aku manukura tēnā koutou

Koutou kua karapinepine nei i te reo karanga o te Pāti Kākariki

Koutou, otirā tātou kua whakarauika mai nei ki te whakanui i te kaupapa e tūhono nei i a

tātou:

Ko te rangatiratanga, ko te mana motuhake me te kaitiakitanga

When I look at my tamariki, my mokopuna, I feel a huge responsibility to make real change

for them and for their future.

I want to see an Aotearoa where all tamariki can grow up safe and loved by their whānau,

with everything they need to be healthy and nurtured.

I want to see an Aotearoa that truly values te ao Māori knowledge and leadership, and

embraces it as part of the enduring solutions that we all deserve.

I want to see an Aotearoa that recognises we are better when we collectively support one

another.

The Green vision is an Aotearoa where all of us have what we need to live good lives.

I yearn for an Aotearoa that prioritises our relationship to our stunning natural world so

much so, that the generations after us can be proud of what we left for them.

I stand here today – as a wahine Māori, as a Green Co-leader and Minister, as a member of

a progressive and passionate party – and I am proud to say we are more determined than

ever to achieve this vision.

Our Te Mātāwaka caucus, which is our Māori and Pasifika Caucus – includes our Māori,

Pasifika and Tangata Tiriti Members of Parliament. So that is myself, the chair of Te

Mātāwaka Dr Elizabeth Kerekere, Teanau Tuiono and Jan Logie as our Tiriti spokesperson.

This year in Waitangi, Te Mātāwaka had the opportunity to announce six pou priorities to

uphold the mana of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

We have emphasised Tino Rangatiratanga, Mana Motuhake and Kaitiaki responsibilities by

pushing the government to have better relationships, and hear the calls from our people

and communities.

We are committed to ensuring more Māori and Pasifika-led initiatives are resourced and

authorised to lead across all the mahi.

As Minister and Co-leader, the commitment to Te Tiriti justice is absolutely integral to

everything I and the Greens do, but needs to be integral to the work that ALL politicians do.

Hutia te rito o te harakeke,

Kei whea te komako e ko?

Ki mai ki ahau; He aha te mea nui o te ao?

Maku e ki atu,

He tangata, he tangata, he tangata!

In te ao Māori we refer to the pā harakeke, a plantation of flax bushes, as an approach to

community wellbeing.

At the centre of the flax bush, is our most precious new growth; a baby, a child, a person in

need of help. This is the rito.

Immediately surrounding, are the protector leaves that are vital to that new growth. These

represent whānau including parents, nannies and papas, aunties and uncles, close friends

and loved ones. These are the awhi rito, who embrace the new growth rito.

The outer fronds of the harakeke, represent the strengths of our ancestors across many

generations and the broader supports in community, hapū and iwi. These provide shelter,

belonging and protection for the whānau leaves in the centre.

Te ao Māori is about valuing children as taonga, who can only be strong and healthy when

at the centre of a thriving pā harakeke.

This is how we must approach our biggest challenges as a country. We can see, that

tangata whenua hold the key to these enduring solutions for generations to come.

It is our role as Green MPs and in Government to highlight that our whānau hold the

solutions and require the support to strengthen our communities across the country in the

big challenges we face.

This is my approach to my role as the Minister of the Prevention of Family Violence and

Sexual Violence.

I acknowledge my colleague Jan Logie, who led this kaupapa in Government last term as

Undersecretary. Her incredible leadership made it clear that we must change how we work.

Jan’s foundation work led to this government prioritising the prevention of violence and led

to the creation of this first ever ministerial appointment. I am privileged to be leading

transformational change.

This requires a long-term commitment to a whole of government and community vision of

eliminating family violence and sexual violence. We must massively build up our prevention

work to stop violence from happening in the first place. At the same time we need to

expand the safe responses that finally interrupt the intergenerational trauma caused by

this harm.

In May we launched our hui around the country, to inform the creation of a national

strategy and action plan for the prevention of family and sexual violence.

To even get this far, we had to firstly acknowledge the damage and violence that has been

done to tangata whenua by the Crown. We began a pathway to restore that relationship.

This was a necessary starting place but it will remain central to our government’s approach

and solutions to violence.

Now I want to be very clear that family violence and sexual violence happens across every

community. But some people have more privilege and resource to be able to get away with

and hide their violence more than others. It is completely unacceptable that any one group

is demonised for violence.

But what is more important, is how to achieve enduring solutions. Engaging with people at

the frontlines of harm, is absolutely essential to shifting how we work.

I will continue to meet with a wide range of people and communities who want support to

just live their lives in peace. I meet with victim-survivors and people who use violence - and

sometimes they have been both.

When I meet with women, there is common agreement. Women all want healthy, violence-

free lives for their whole families and their children and it is my job to meet with them

about how we can achieve that vision.

And that includes meeting with women associated with gangs and I will never ever

apologise for going to where the solutions are.

I am proud that as a Green Minister I can do what is right and not just what is popular. It is

in working with people, not stomping on people, that the solutions lie.

It is also my job, as a Green Minister, to call out dangerous, racist and classist political

narratives from other political parties.

Those politicians who deliberately ignore the systemic causes of crime and violence, do not

make communities safer or uplift the mana of our communities.

Their dehumanising narratives have no place in Aotearoa.

Everyone we have engaged with, from the government sector, victim advocates, victims and

perpetrators and the loads of research available, everyone knows the harmful

stigmatisation must stop.

But, the ghost of Don Brash is haunting the National Party.

It is lazy and dangerous politics we are seeing from the Opposition.

They do not have answers or solutions to the big issues in Aotearoa, and so they are

seeking to divide our communities.

Just this week, National voted against banning conversion therapy, even though they say

they don’t support conversion therapy.

They used lazy and dangerous politics to get some attention, putting politics ahead of

peoples’ lives.

That is the latest step in desperate attempts from the National Party that will make things

worse in our communities, not better.

It is abhorrent. We will not let it stand. We are here to push back against that type rubbish

that threatens our communities who have been smeared for generations by people who

hold power selfishly.

And I have faith that what the Opposition is trying to do will not work. People do not want

what the Opposition is selling.

The nasty politics of yesterday will not feature in the Aotearoa of tomorrow.

Aotearoa as we know it today is built on stolen whenua. There is mamae, there is hurt,

there are generations of trauma to address.

But we cannot and must not shy away from that.

Colonisation flows through our history and our present; it is in the systems of government

we work in; it is in the history we teach to our children; it is in the streets and communities

we live in.

But colonisation does not have to be a part of our future. We can reimagine an Aotearoa

decolonised, and indigenous ways of life revitalised.

Aotearoa is facing a reckoning, and in this moment lies a beautiful opportunity for real

change for planet and for people.

I recently met with local migrant and refugee women of colour in Christchurch. They spoke

to the fear they have about asking for help when they are victims of family violence. They

held the same fear that their families will be separated, judged, and traumatised, but not

helped.

These are the same concerns we hear from hapū and whanau, from people of all

backgrounds, and this shows me that what works and is needed for Māori will benefit

everyone. A re-indigenised Aotearoa, is a beautiful way to care for all of us!

As I mentioned earlier, from May and over three months we held community led

engagement to help create a national strategy to eliminate family violence and sexual

violence.

Now that this is completed, the National Strategy and Action Plans are being drafted for

Cabinet consideration in September. I am so grateful to the deep insights that people have

given to inform this strategy. They gave their experiences with generosity and hope for real

change and peaceful lives for all.

In Budget 2021 in May, I was really pleased to announce another 131.9 million dollars in

new funding towards the transformation work and community-led, whānau-centred

solutions to wellbeing and living lives free of violence.

This funding includes providing people with support to stop using violence. It addresses

immediate safety for victims and allows them to stay safe and protected in their homes.

It also includes local programs across the country to support new parents with skills and

tools for violence free strategies with their children.

I am proud of the work done so far to get us to this point, but it is going to take a lot more

work and long-term planning to try and shift to something that is dramatically different.

I know this work must be properly resourced by government, then led and owned by

communities. I know that if we do it right, this work will endure beyond any Minister or

political party, because the people will demand that this path be protected. It is long

overdue, but it is never too late to make a commitment to our whānau and our

communities.

We are in a Co-operation Agreement, where we have the Greens in government, but also

not in government. As well as violence prevention, I am also an Associate Housing Minister

with oversight of the homelessness responses in Aotearoa.

The Greens have always said that housing is a human right, and a core public good. Houses

are homes for people to live in, and not just a way to make profit.

Our country is one of the least affordable places in the world to live. Whānau are being

pushed into tenuous renting situations that are cold, damp, unsafe and inaccessible.

Whānau are living in transitional and emergency housing for more time than anyone ever

thought we would need. The impact is unacceptable, and unnecessary. We can choose to

fix this.

This is a problem that has been decades in the making. Previous governments chose to sell

off public housing and have not yet replaced this desperately needed, quality, affordable

housing at the scale required.

We need a range of solutions to prevent further homelessness and to address the complex

challenges that people experiencing homelessness face.

We are starting to make good progress. The country’s first Homelessness Action Plan was

launched in February 2020, supported by $300 million in funding. The plan aims to help

more than 10,000 people.

And the new transitional housing places that I have announced this term are making an

important difference for everyone in them.

Importantly, the Māori and Iwi Housing Innovation Framework for Action (MAIHI) is guided

by Māori principles to deliver a system-wide response to Māori housing stress. 

In this year’s Budget, we extended support to the 1,000 people who were housed during

the initial COVID-19 response.

The government also invested $380 million dollars in Māori housing for around 1,000

additional houses, and repairs to a further 700 houses. In addition, Māori will have direct

access to a $350 million Māori Infrastructure Fund.

Right now, we are doing the 18-month review of the Homelessness Action Plan. The

Homelessness Action Plan was created with community and the sector and was the first

time Government ever had a comprehensive plan.

It was from a time before the global pandemic which has since made things even harder for

those already struggling.

I expect that the review will show there are more actions we can take to truly make

homelessness brief, rare and non-recurring.

One area I want to see more attention to, is for young people who are homeless. There are

unique solutions needed for young people who miss out on the support that they would

get if they were adults. As well as housing and social services, we need to focus on

reconnection and establishing relationships back with their whānau and community.

I want to thank the many organisations who are already doing this work and are ready to

do more of it. I have a responsibility to prioritise your voices in my work across all the

housing Ministers.

Our Cooperation Agreement means that we retain our independent Green voice to put

forward bold, new solutions.

So on housing the Greens have continued campaigning for a broad range of well thought-

out solutions that will actually turn the crisis around.

We want to see a proper Warrant of Fitness for rental homes, so all tenants are guaranteed

a healthy home and don’t have to demand what should already be in place.

And we are the only political party who have put rent controls on the agenda. The situation

is dire enough to have something direct and immediate for people who rent while we wait

for more public and affordable housing to be built.

I know the Government needs to do more to improve lives for people. And I also know that

it will take time and dedication to address these big issues.

In the Greens, we will continue to use our independent voice to encourage our

Government partners to go further and faster. We must help build more public support for bold changes, and strengthen the mandate for the Government to act with urgency and

resolution that matches the scale of the housing crisis.

Our Green vision to see everyone living in a safe, warm, dry, affordable, and accessible

home, will remain an absolute priority for us.

As I said earlier, COVID-19 has shone a glaring light on the inequities in our society, and has

made it harder for people who were already struggling.

But it has also shown us that we can make big, bold changes, fast, when we work together.

We know that it is bold changes that are needed for everyone to have what they need to

live good lives, for a stable climate and for thriving nature.

We will keep the mana of people and the planet at heart of what we do.

We will strive for a world that keeps the pā harakeke nourished and bursting with health.

We will insist that Tiriti justice is upheld across our work. We will be clear that tino

rangatiratanga is key to healing relationships across communities and reconnecting all of us

with our seas, our rivers, our bush, our mountains and our whenua.

Our politics is about restoration and protection.

We know everyone must commit to this.

This is intergenerational work. I have faith in the work we are doing. I have hope because I

know that you, our members, are with us as we carry out this transformational work.

The Green Party will always stand up to the politics of fear and division and exploitation.

We will meet that narrative with a stronger message: one of inclusion, of acceptance, and of

support for one another.

We get further, and we get there faster, when we move together.

Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.